Beth Cassani

Beth Cassani’s practice research project MESH asks: What sorts of artist mentoring can emerge to support the choreographic artist when activated from the centre of collaborative creation and performance? MESH is a participatory choreography created by Vanessa Grasse in collaboration with ten dance artists. It is commissioned by the Great Exhibition of the North, Newcastle and produced by Yorkshire Dance and Dance City. It invites audiences and passers-by to join in the making of a public ritual of togetherness. As an artistic response to the divisive global political climate, MESH explores how a participatory choreography for a large group can bring people together. The work is usually performed outdoor in urban sites. The cast of ten professional dancers and local residents weave through the city’s streets and respond to public spaces, creating co-operative, self-organising formations that invite gentle connections and interactions. Cassani uses a practice research methodology to explores strategies for choreographic mentoring including dramaturgy and artist support by way of devising dialogue between project participants, dancers and collaborators Tim Ingold and Philip Ball, and dialogue around the developing practice through a range of lines of communication; in creative meetings with the choreographer, in rehearsal with dancers, in performance with participatory audiences, in marketing with producers and arts organisations, in leading post performance talks. The artist mentor or dramaturg is often someone outside the performance. This research offers new insights from inside the emerging choreography and inside the live performances over a two-year period. As such the practice utilises an autoethnographic approach to reflect on embodied and subjective responses to process and product. This research facilitates the emergence of new embodied mentoring strategies that offers an alternative to traditional approaches to artist mentoring and dance dramaturgy. Insights are gained that could not be accessed by observation or interview. The work was performed twenty-one times at the Great Exhibition of the North, Newcastle and in Leeds City Centre, Wakefield City Centre and at the Hepworth Gallery Wakefield, it has also been performed in Hull, Malta, Bournemouth and tours to South Korea in September. It is funded by Arts Council England. https://getnorth2018.com/previous-events/mesh/ https://meshjournal.wixsite.com/mesh

This paper discusses a Practice-Led research project with my children as collaborators in an internationally touring and award winning contemporary dance performance entitled ‘13’, performed when they were aged 12 and 14. I articulate some conclusions from the collaborative choreographic making process and the embodied activity of touring performance. Gender and performance theories (Butler 1990, Schechner 1985) presupposed the practice and informed the development of the work. The practice is now repositioned to authentically articulate the collaborative experience of children’s agency and power (Oswell 2013). As we collaboratively explored ‘How to be a man in the 21st century’ through process and performance, the boy’s iterated their experience of their developing embodied identities. I assert that dance practice can empower young people in asserting embodied communicative skills. Considering the ‘making’ and learning of masculinity in the everyday/domestic, I question whether these children are enabled to determine ownership of authentic and non-limited representations of their bodies. I consider whether the apparent authenticity of children’s bodies dancing legitimates a simultaneous reframing of the objectifying gaze whilst empowering children as self-aware subjects with potential to creatively undermine adult expectation and the researcher’s intentions.

‘13’ is an internationally touring contemporary dance performed by two boys aged 12 and 14, made in collaboration with their mother. The Practice-Led research methodology draws a set of conclusions from three phases of research activity; a collaborative choreographic making process, the embodied activity of performance, the application of Butler’s ‘performativity of gender’ (1990) as a theoretical framework to interrogate the emergent material from the first two phases. This paper extrapolates findings gleaned from this methodological framework. I employ Schon’s reflection-in and reflection-on practice (1983) as a model for dance making with children to explore ‘How to be a man in the 21st century’. The boy’s iterate their experience of their developing embodied identities, social relations with father, mother and wider societal contexts. This dance praxis may creatively intervene with the ‘making’ of masculinity in the everyday/domestic influenced in part by models established by their father and mother’s masculinities. Schechner’s theory of ‘twice performed’ gender (1985) is applied i.e., by performing traits of masculinity the performance emphasizes, and then destabilises the performance of gender. I consider what happens when children do this. The children here are learning masculinity not as ontological part of their bodies but as a performed characteristic. Does the apparent authenticity of children’s bodies dancing legitimate a simultaneous reframing of the objectifying gaze whilst empowering children as self-aware subjects with creative potential? I will assert that dance practice can empower young people in finding and asserting embodied communicative skills and in determining ownership of authentic and non-limited representations of their bodies.

In two case studies exploring the work of choreographers; Lucy Suggate and Vanessa Grasse, both based in the north of England, I use auto-ethnographic methodologies to explore these artist’s ‘social choreography’ (Hewitt 2005). I critique the ways in which dances’ aesthetic and cultural policy developments can be seen to engage with the socio-economic and political landscape. I do this by developing Bishop’s discussion of the relationship between social practices and artistic quality (2006). I also explore Andrew Hewitt’s claims that the ‘aesthetic operates at the very base of social experience’ (2005). My case studies illustrate how artists may align themselves with aesthetics that reside or may be sourced in a grass roots context. Deploying non-professional ‘undisciplined’ bodies the practices and products are positioned both physically and ideologically to challenge the implicit commodification of the artist’s labour, their making practices, and the framing of value derived from dance practice in the neoliberal context. Working with ‘the popular’ and ‘the mass’ often meets the impact agendas of large organisations and the remits of public funders, as such it may provide the artist with a profitable hunting ground. But the perception that the grass roots is the starting point from which to advance to a more glossy lucrative and aesthetically superior mainstream is an outmoded and politically facile trajectory. Problematizing the economic, social, political and aesthetic concerns faced by these independent artists in the UK I will explore the ethical contexts for dance artists navigating the building of coalitions with communities.

We all move in the workplace, whether it’s the miniscule movements of our mouse-hands or the stately waltz of our forklift trucks. Imove isn’t just bringing fabulous projects to the streets, parks, theatres, galleries, beaches, swimming pools and sports centres of Yorkshire, we’re going behind the scenes to work with employers and their workers in our brand new project Workmoves. We’ve teamed choreographer Beth Cassani with people from very different lines of work, to explore the many ways we move in our day-to-day lives. Instantly recognisable in their bright red jackets, the Sheffield City Ambassadors work to make the city centre clean, safe and welcoming, doing everything from giving directions and arranging litter removal to stewarding events and reuniting lost children with their parents – no two days are ever the same for the Ambassadors. Beth will also be working with Arup, an international firm of designers, engineers and business consultants with nearly 10,000 members of staff. Arup is committed to innovation and creativity and, while they aren’t quite sure where Workmoves will take them, they are looking forward to the collaboration and to having some fun along the way. The outcome of Workmoves will be decided by its participants, but filmmaker Andy Wood is documenting the whole process and films and performances could pop up in the most unexpected of places – watch this space for more!

The Workmoves commission enabled choreographer Beth Cassani and filmmaker Andy Wood to collaborate on a creative research enquiry at Arup in Leeds. The project explored connections between the body and movement in the workplace, culminating in an alternative perspective on 'office choreography'.

MESH is an improvised participatory dance practice developed by dance artist Vanessa Grasse in 2017 and performed in urban public spaces. This article brings together discourses from site performance and contemporary participatory performance practices to examine site adaptivity, mobility and dialogue. I distinguish between site-adaptive practices in urban settings which simply meet the demands of the neo-liberal environment, and those which engage with site in a way that necessitates discursive and ethical modes of criticality. I suggest that trends born out of the social and ethical turns in contemporary performance can be seen to be informing strategies for relational choreographic practices in urban public space. I explore how Mesh illustrates this by analysing the methods and strategies used by Grasse and the dancers to disrupt social norms and to foster social interaction.

Before Night Fell is an exploration of male identity, friendship, camaraderie and bravery. The second in a trilogy of works investigating aspects of masculinity and maleness, Before Night Fell follows Cassani's award-winning work made with her two sons. Company Chameleon continue their ongoing creative collaboration with Beth Cassani, and in this new work, they develop concepts of physical risk, game structures, intimacy, vulnerability, power and manipulation.

A public presentation and Q&A on making choreography with family, as part of Juncture Festival's Talk Series at The Tetley Oct 2016

Thinking Dance PaR 2 week Practice research project with 2 undisciplined bodies and Phoenix Dance Theatre. Performed at Yorkshire Dance

Film for Keeley Forsyth and Matthew Bourne's album launch

Global release music video for Keeley Forsyth and Matthew Bourne's album Hand to Mouth.

This special issue brings together a collection of research essays, interviews, performance documentation and provocations that interrogate notions of ‘the contemporary’ in twenty-first-century British dance. The issues, themes and cultural trends addressed in these articles are brought forward from the inaugural Questioning the Contemporary in 21st Century British Dance Practices symposium held at Leeds Beckett University in July 2014. These themes are key to the current and future landscapes of British dance practices as this volume illuminates.

Dancer, Choreographer and Dramaturg, Beth Cassani’s project The Faun/G.O.A.T made in collaboration with Joseph Mercier takes the Ballet Russe Afternoon of a Faun as a key reference/departure point using the image of the ‘faun’ as a creature of becomings, transformations and halves to facilitate a choreo-dramaturgical exploration of youth subcultures, aesthetics and bodies as choreographic process and performance. The research project activates dramaturgical conversation as a making process for the choreographic collaboration acknowledging the interplay between choreographic problems and dramaturgical dialogue whilst exploring unfixing material and the process of becoming as both method and concept. Cassani and Mercier created a new choreographic work positioned as ‘a conversation between millennials and their predecessors’. It uses this framing device to capture the ongoing nature of the dialogue that generates and forms the choreographic material, and is a significant aspect of contemporary dance-making processes and critical discourse. This practice offers a new research insight into the applications of dance dramaturgy. This work has been shared in a range of public contexts over the last two years; Yorkshire Dance ‘Come as you are’ Friday Firsts event April 2018, Duckie at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London Oct 2018, SLAP Festival York Theatre Royal Feb 2019, Duckie programme at Latitude Festival Cabaret Stage, July 2019, Duckie programme at Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, Trades Club July 2019. The work is in receipt of Arts Council England funding. The work and images of the work are also featured in an online video of SLAP Festival on SLAP website and on Facebook, it is reviewed in the Guardian and in Unknown Magazine see links below https://www.slapyork.co.uk/lineup2019/2019/2/22/the-faun-project-beth-cassani-amp-joseph-mercier https://www.slapyork.co.uk/festivals https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/feb/25/slap-festival-review-york-ecstasy-rage-intimate-confessions http://unknownmag.co.uk/theatre/slap-festival-the-faun-project/